According to Polyphony Digital studio boss Kazunori Yamauchi, the total lifelong player counts Gran Turismo Sport now stands at 9.5 million users. Yamauchi shared this figure as part of an interview with Japanese journalist Toshifume Watanabi, for the Japanese regional edition of Octane magazine, which was published this past weekend.
We have already discussed some of the content of this interview, as Yamauchi talked about the influences behind Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 7‘s return to a format more similar to previous major series titles. However, the interview also covered other topics, including Scapes – what Yamauchi now calls “in the thousands”, and the importance of real-time ray tracing. Among the other topics was a brief discussion GT Sport.
He talked about how the series changes from title to title, and Yamauchi explained that ‘every time we change generations, we have consciously taken on some new challenges. That’s why every title has fans, but sometimes the changes confused the users ”. He brings the concept of how GT Sport more depends on online sports, and how it initially seems to deter some fans. “As a result, we got 9.5 million users, but it did not sell explosively from the beginning, and it seemed that the concept gradually progressed and the support increased during the three years”.
Of course, users and sales are not quite the same. Some players may have picked up a copy of the game and never played, or even bought two or three to collect special editions. Others may chase on multiple accounts, or give other players in the household access to the game. However, we previously reported that GT Sport surpassed the seven million players and the eight million sales within three months in a row.
This would indicate that about a quarter of all GT Sport players have come to the title in the last twenty months and would mean about the same share of game sales. The game passed 3.3 million sales in the first eight months of its life, but it seems to have grown largely linear until the second anniversary before sales began to expand recently.
Nevertheless, with a fourth season of the FIA Online Championship around the corner and the prospect of Sport Mode becoming part Gran Turismo 7‘s offering, the game could see ten million users and sales ahead of the next generation title. That would put it above Gran Turismo 2 and fifth place in the rankings of all time.
You can read the Octane interview with Yamauchi here, although it is in Japanese.
Featured image thanks to 05XR8.